Notehall

Notehall is an online marketplace, in which college students can buy and sell class notes. Notehall gained recognition after appearing on the ABC reality show '' Shark Tank'' in October 2009. It has since been purchased by Chegg, a textbook-rental company, for $3.7M in equity and undisclosed cash. Notehall.com was later integrated into the Chegg Homework Help site.

Concept

Students who are looking to sell class notes, outlines, or study guides can upload documents to Notehall in order to make them available to their classmates. Students looking to purchase documents can buy credits from the website which can be used to view the documents. Notehall takes 50% of the sales of any notes.

History

Notehall was launched in 2008 at the University of Arizona by Sean Conway, Justin Miller, D.J. Stephan and Fadi Chalfoun. Within 8 months, 40% of the students at the University of Arizona were using Notehall. By November 2008, the student government at the University of Arizona was considering a partnership with Notehall. In October 2009, Notehall appeared on the ABC reality show '' Shark Tank'' where they were successful in landing a $90,000 offer from Barbara Corcoran. However, weeks after the episode aired, Notehall eventually declined Corcoran's offer, and decided to participate in DreamIt Ventures annual start-up incubator and funding event, later in 2009.

Notehall in the news

Notehall.com has been in the news on ''Wall Street Journal'', Forbes.com, Business Week, Yahoo, ''US News'', Techcrunch etc. The co-founders of Notehall were nominated as the 2009 Finalists: America's Best Young Entrepreneurs. Notehall was one of the six firms in Selling Strategies: Six New Ways To Make Money Online. ''US News'' ranked Notehall as one of the five must-have Social Media Tools for College Students. Sean Conway, the Co-Founder and CEO of Notehall, Inc. was featured on the ''Wall Street Journal'' for being creative in getting funding during the economic recession. DreamIT ventures introduced Notehall.com to the media through an article in Techcrunch during August 2009.

Criticism

The practice of buying and selling course notes in sites such as Notehall (and competitors such as Course Hero) has been criticised by university officials and faculty members. In California, Mark Cioc, Interim Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Education at the University of California Santa Cruz, sent a letter to all faculty members and undergraduates alerting them that the commercialization of class notes is illegal in California. Cioc went so far as to refer to note selling sites as "devious," and the UCSC general counsel has sent "cease and desist" letters to Notehall, OneClass, and Course Hero.

Individual faculty members have also expressed concerns that the selling of notes based on their lectures and courses could violate their intellectual property rights. Illinois Institute of Technology employee and former DePaul University faculty member Gina Mieszczak said, “If I put the time and effort into developing a brief summary of a class I was teaching or a particular lesson, I would be extremely disappointed if it were put on the Internet and people were making a profit off of it, especially without my permission.” University of Manitoba

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